Video: Helsinki Design Lab Studio on Sustainability

This video shares some insight into the Helsinki Design Lab Studio on Sustainability. The Studio spent a week together sketching ideas for a national strategy for carbon neutrality in the built environment, eventually developing 10 recommendations as a starting point for redesigning the problem comprehensively.

“The studio concept has at least three key facets: it’s a way of working, it’s a physical space dedicated to the project, and it’s an effective team.

Perhaps most importantly, the studio is a mind set. To be “in studio” is to collaboratively work towards a solution. This way of working nurtures ideas that exist at the intersection of areas of expertise. Design creates a space to see challenges without bias. In effect, the studio is a shortcut towards making sure every aspect of a problem is seen, and therefore prepares the ground to designing more effective solutions.

In a studio the focus is on using plausible scenarios and collaboratively working through iterations rather than waiting for individual ideas to be complete and perfect before they are expressed. By switching between group work and individual work, the studio is able to produce a diverse range of possibilities while also leveraging the power of collaboration.

Studios are organized around specific challenges. Each of the HDL Studios will spend one week here in Finland, during which time they are totally immersed in the problem—be it ageing, education, or sustainability. With access to governmental decision makers, average citizens, and anyone else they see fit to confer with, the studio’s goal is to develop a road map to strategic improvement. This roadmap and a top ten list of actionable opportunities to get us there, will form the basis of Helsinki Design Lab’s ongoing work centered around these themes.”